I Played D&D For The First Time...

...And I'm not as embarrassed to admit it as I thought I'd be.

Backstory. My friend Martin (whose blog I would link to here were it not completely devoid of posts) has been trying for the better part of eight years to get me to give it a shot and I've resisted—partially because it just seemed too nerdy, partially because it seemed overly complicated, and largely out of spite. Recently, he asked me about playing again and I decided to stop judging it without trying it. Making no promises, I told him I'd give it a try over winter break.

So it finally happened. I rolled up a character and we played with a group of four, and it was pretty much what I was expecting. D&D is essentially playing pretend for grown-ups with some rules to keep things from getting too ridiculous. And by some rules, I mean books and books of rules that you will need to constantly reference to get anywhere. Also, there's math. More than you'd think for something people consider to be a game.

But then, as a gamer, I can't really criticize it for all those things. Any video game is a fantasy, although they're able to hide the rules and math behind physics engines and GUIs. And if we're going to compare, D&D has one thing video games can't hope to accomplish—legitimate choice.

In any story-based game, you'll hit a wall at some point. Typically, you'll hit a point at which you either complete the mission as written, or you fail, die, or stop moving forward in the game. Take a game like the Grand Theft Auto series. You're on a mission to kill someone. If you fail, and he gets away, you just fail the mission. That's it. Try again. Regardless of how involved you were with the game, the immersion just stopped.

So what if it didn't? What if instead, you reported back to the person who gave you the mission. Maybe you get a second chance, and maybe you fail again. Now, they're after you too because you can't be counted on. An agent for the other side offers you protection if you'll help them instead. Blow it for them, and maybe you've managed to piss off the two strongest crime bosses in town and all you can do is run.

Games are working on this, but the fact is the only thing that can make a continual experience is a real intelligence responding to the player. A video game can only account for so many choices, and players are always going to be able to punch holes in the linear narrative. The kind of AI needed for that sort of interaction is a long, long way off.

Because D&D (or any pen-and-paper RPG) has someone running the game, the game world genuinely responds to your choices. There's a direction the plot is being moved in, but the players often have the ability to hijack it as they see fit. The trade-off for the added freedom is the added work—you need to track your own inventory, statistics, maps. But with friends, the work part goes by pretty easily, and I think I'm going to keep playing.

I'm just not going to tell people. I mean, it's still pretty nerdy.